Archive for the 'The Doors' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

For many music industry professionals, the winter NAMM Show’s return to Anaheim Convention Center this past week was the year’s top priority. While walking through the large trade show floors, it was common to hear people say their schedules were arranged around the annual trip to O.C. or how much they couldn’t wait to come back.

International retailers touted their regular products and lateste innovations. New and established musicians used it to discover, network and promote tools that help them fulfill their creative ambitions.

Brian Transeau is a key example of the latter. The American electronic dance artist known as BT spent more than a decade refining Break Tweaker with help from Massachusetts company iZotope.

During a demo of the drum synthesizer and beat machine product Thursday afternoon, he showed how to stretch and subdivide music notes in different meters as onlookers gasped. Loud EDM sounds blaring from the small iZotope booth expectedly drew a big crowd.

A couple of decades ago, on-site performances at the National Association of Music Merchants show, or NAMM, were definitely not a key part of the event held every January at the Anaheim Convention Center.

But once again this year performances were front-and-center throughout the show, held Jan 23-26, with the far-flung likes of bluesmen old (Otis Taylor) and younger (Jonny Lang), Americana trio the Kruger Brothers and classic rockers Blue Oyster Cult and Robby Krieger of the Doors among the artists who could be spied at the event.

In an interview before he took the stage to headline the GoPro Stage Saturday night, Krieger discussed the importance of NAMM in helping keep a wide variety of music-making alive, especially via each developing generation. As early as the Doors’ landmark 1967 debut, the guitar great, now 68, was already incorporating flamenco and jazz with blues and rock.

“It’s all important to me,” he says. “I fear today kids don’t check out all that stuff; they just listen to Eddie Van Halen and try to copy that. Back in the day, we went as far back as we could.”

For nearly 20 years, Thievery Corporation has been synthesizing world music into albums or concerts that go down easily, even when the messages in them should call listeners to action, not to a dance floor. But the Washington, D.C., duo embraces that dichotomy, preferring to make points more subtly – so much so that they can be unheard by many.

The crowd for their Greek Theatre show Friday night seemingly arrived en masse, with nary an empty seat remaining and most attendees on hand for an hour-long opening set from U.K. group Morcheeba. Though principally comprising multi-instrumentalists and DJs Rob Garza and Eric Hilton, Thievery has turned its novel performance style into an institution. Most fans breathlessly report to friends that the outfit is an amazing must-see.

When the quiet outdoor venue went dark and the first snaps and thuds of conga signified the show’s start, the Greek transformed into a sweaty groove party, post-hippie socialites filling the aisles near the stage so they could record as much as possible on their smartphones. The cannabis haze was dense enough to make even the most liberal music reviewer look over his shoulder for a lurking parent.

That opening beat ignited bassist Ashish Vyas to begin a most impressive display of endurance, as he danced and played bass so restlessly that it was difficult to keep track of his movements, from climbing the drum riser to interact with the primary percussionist to toying with each singer like a buzzing fly. Garza and Hilton, on the other hand, rotated to wherever the songs needed them, sometimes on the decks, other times on stringed instruments.

Ray Manzarek performs at Pacific Amphitheatre in 2011. Photo by Kelly A. Swift, for the Register

Ray Manzarek, a founding member and keyboardist of the iconic '60s L.A.-based rock band the Doors, died Monday at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74.

Manzarek was known for his distinctive electric organ work on such Doors' legendary hits as "Light My Fire," "L.A. Woman" "Break On Through to the Other Side," "Hello, I Love You" and "The End."

There was such a Facebook furor over Fathom Events' satellite broadcast of Led Zeppelin's Celebration Day earlier this month that I'm loathe to recommend heading to the theater for another concert flick anytime soon.

But this looks to be different. Or at least it's a different provider, beaming to only one O.C. location.

September 19th, 2012, 3:00 pm by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Dead Sara's Emily Armstrong at the Sunset Strip Music Festival. Photo: Armando Brown, for the Register

Emily Armstrong still can't believe the incredible experiences she and the L.A. group she fronts have gone through in the past six months. Since the release of the single “Weatherman” back in February and a full-length self-titled debut in April, buzz band Dead Sara has gone from playing to small turnouts in Hollywood clubs to thousands of quickly converted fans at rock festivals.

The quartet opened this year's Sunset Strip Music Festival on the main stage just outside the Key Club, while vocalist and guitarist Armstrong got to perform with Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek of the Doors at the nearby House of Blues during one of several pre-fest gigs. Dead Sara is currently on tour with Huntington Beach punks the Offspring, appearing with them Oct. 5 at the Hollywood Palladium, but first they return to Southern California this weekend to open another festival main stage, this time Epicenter 2012 at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, ahead of Stone Temple Pilots, Deftones, Bush, Scars on Broadway and more.

“I'd say (this year) has been pretty mediocre,” Armstrong says during a recent phone interview, unable to hide her sarcasm before admitting she's been humbled by sudden success. In conversation she's bluntly witty, and on stage she's fearless, grabbing the microphone to let out a hearty growl or softly deliver a bluesy ballad. It doesn't hurt that she has strong support: guitarist Siouxsie Medley, drummer Sean Friday, bassist Chris Null.

Yet, despite growing acclaim for Dead Sara's steady swirl of shows this year, it's the special occasions that have really left their singer floored. The gravity of having performed “Soul Kitchen” with two of the three remaining members of the Doors didn't really sink in at first.

The big-bash conclusion of the annual Sunset Strip Music Festival, held for the fifth time Saturday in West Hollywood, always benefits from the most authentic setting of just about any single-day blast in Southern California: a sealed-off stretch of Sunset Boulevard, from the Whisky a Go Go at the east end to the Key Club (once the site of Gazzarri's) up a slight incline toward the west.

The deeply influential history of that part of L.A. wasn't lost on an awestruck Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, guitarist for veteran Huntington Beach punk rock band the Offspring, penultimate main-stage performer this time and the most visible act amid a sizable O.C. contingency at SSMF 2012, including afternoon turns from the Bolts and Midnight Hour.

“We used to drive up here from Orange County to see the Ramones play the Palladium (several miles to the east) or to see the Clash play the Whisky and the Roxy,” Noodles recalled shortly into the group's solid 75-minute turn as the sun finally set.

Indeed, as landmark rock 'n' roll locales go, this one's among the most legendary on the planet, its condensation of clubs, with Lou Adler's Roxy at the heart of it all, making the event an agreeable experience even during muggy weather. Can't take the heat? Then duck into one of the world-famous venues that the Doors, this year's iconic honoree, turned into regular stomping grounds by the time the Summer of Love arrived.

August 16th, 2012, 10:00 pm by KELLI SKYE FADROSKI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Exene: 'It would be awesome if someone would tell us how many records (X has) sold.' Photo: Maggie St. Thomas

When Exene Cervenka moved to Southern California in 1976, the budding vocalist and poet arrived to find that punk rock wasn't exploding on the Sunset Strip the way it was starting to in New York and the U.K.

The following year she joined her then- boyfriend bassist John Doe, along with guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer DJ Bonebrake, to form the quintessential L.A. punk band X, but they initially had a rough time finding places to play along that hallowed stretch of venues.

“Back then there was the Whisky, the Starwood Nightclub and Gazzarri's, and they all had cover bands and disco and hair bands. None of our people were ever really allowed to play there, let alone go there,” Cervenka recalled during a recent phone interview as she and the group prepared to play their seminal 1980 debut Los Angeles once more in its entirety, with an assist from producer Ray Manzarek, as part of the fifth annual Sunset Strip Music Festival this weekend.

These days X is welcomed as local legends whenever they play their hometown, but back in the day they were banned from the Whisky a Go Go a number of times, Cervenka remembers – not because of anything the band did but because other rowdier acts on the same bills would throw and break things.

That's changing for the SSMF's fifth outing, kicking off Aug. 16-17 with an onslaught of West Hollywood club shows at the Roxy, Whiskey, Viper Room and elsewhere, and culminating with a daylong festival on Aug. 18, capped by sets from Marilyn Manson, the Offspring, Steve Aoki, Bad Religion and more.

This year's Sunset Strip icon of choice is, with good reason, the Doors. Subsequently, many of the above acts and possibly others -- including "very special guest" Black Label Society, Far East Movement, De La Soul, Dead Sara, Das Racist and more -- are expected to perform songs from the lastingly influential Jim Morrison & Co. catalog.

"The Doors are honored to be celebrated by the magical, legendary Strip,” Ray Manzarek said in a statement earlier Wednesday. “A great leap forward from the Summer Of Love to today. What a great time we're going to have! The Sunset Strip. Live bands, loud music, Rock and Roll. It's the '60s all over again, and everyone is welcome. Dancing in the streets. Joy, Love, Peace. And we want to get it all together just One - More - TIME! Could this be the beginning of the new Golden Age? Let it be so."

In the never-ending race to see which classic touring act can play O.C. more, these days I'd say Earth, Wind & Fire are hanging tight in third, while the top spot is a neck-and-neck contest between last fall's headliners at Jack's Sixth Show, Heart and Def Leppard.

Looked like the Wilson sisters were about to pull ahead when they announced a return engagement Aug. 9 at Pacific Amphitheatre. But now the English hard-rock band (including frontman Joe Elliott, pictured, and longtime Laguna Hills resident Phil Collen on guitar) is headed back to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine on June 22.